My dirty life and times.

January 2006

January 31, 2006

Developing story. Global vision. "We won't sit back and wait to be hit again." Our complicit press, all style and guys like Matthews wanting to be liked by guy like Delay. Moral relativism disguised as balance. While liberty melts away, and Congressman Eliot Engel camps out on the aisle to get his picture on television with the man his party purports to oppose. Pathetic. America on the wane, buying lies without a care, enjoying the freefall into debt. The number is now at 2,241. And the liberal media goes for drinks after deadline.

Dig the headline, the trust, the willful turning away from the facts and the failure. The "hopeful society" indeed. There they are. And this from Paula Zahn, covering tonight's speech: "...you've got a lot of people out there saying, if you're Republican, we're going to keep the country safe, you know, if you vote for a Democrat, that basically you want to be bombed." To quote James Earl Jones: this is CNN.

January 29, 2006

Just two years ago, George W. Bush was President, the United States was at war in Iraq, the casualty count was climbing, the Democrats provided no cohesive opposition strategy, and bloggers thought they would change the world....my how things have...ah forget it. This blog is two years old folks, just one small voice among tens of thousands out there, its reach and influence an exiguous, occasional network. So then - why? Two reasons: I have to write, and I have to write for an audience, no matter how meager at times. Writing holds the hounds of self-loathing at bay. And I dig the conversation: visits to this site range from the scores to the many thousands on any given day, for any given post, but the only stat I really care about is comments - and comments are steady, omnipresent, and growing. Many, many times the best writing and thinking on this site is not contributed by its main title author, but by those who take the time to comment. For that I thank you, and invite you to continue.

January 23, 2006

Late in life, the brilliant American actor Jack Lemmon had a surgical facelift that smoothed out the wrinkles, removed the bags from under his eyes and sadly, took the expression and elasticity from that wonderful face. Few people noticed, but I did. In his last few movies - the grumpy old actor bookends the poor Odd Couple II, and the even poorer Out to Sea, all with Walter Matthau, and a couple of other turns - Lemmon relied on his voice, the inflections, the tart and sarcastic reaction, the exasperrated diatribe, but it wasn't the same. He died in the pre-September 11th world in June of 2001, just a year after Matthau.

Despite the last few half-hits, Lemmon's legacy is unassailable. To me, he's the greatest actor in American cinema (or at least amidst the rare peers of Fonda, Stewart, and Grant) and for some reason, in these January doldrums, his incredible body of work came to mind like a warm breeze. Maybe it was Lance Mannion's thoughtful posts on liberal (and conservative) Hollywood conventional wisdom and the complexity that really governs cinematic politics. Perhaps it's the fact that my new Netflix account seemed to bring on an instantaneous Lemmon festival, almost unbidden. Or maybe it's the fact that Lemmon once said this:

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. You must reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.

It's very hard to do a better job of describing the thespian arts than art, and Lemmon didn't just say it - he lived it. The antic comedy of a skinny young stage actor morphed into the serious, internal stories of a middle-aged man not afraid to show his age, and his sense that the world is moving on and he cannot crontrol it. Of course, his work with Billy Wilder was among his best and they span the full range - Some Like It Hot, the Apartment, Irma La Douce, The Front Page.

But lately, I've been thinking of a handful of Lemmon dramatic roles: the father searching for his son in Missing, the nuclear engineer turned whistleblower in The China Syndrome, and the conflicted suburban parish priest in Mass Appeal. Generally, these characters are little people - or at least, the guys we don't notice next door. But Lemmon inhabits them with an incredible sense of humanity. Each has a job that comes with a conventional point of view, a set of rules that are not to be challenged - until somebody, or something, or some event does. No one expressed that transition from staid convention, to puzzlement, to anger, to inner turmoil, to rage better than Jack Lemmon - no one.

So here we were this old last weekend, firing up The Out-of-Towners on the DVD and laughing aloud at the antics of Lemmon's Ohio executive who hits the perfect New York storm of transit strike, garbage strike, and a fogged-in Kennedy Airport. (Considering he played two of the great New York characters of all time in Felix Unger and C.C. Baxter, Lemmon can be forgiven this silly anti-Gotham farce). So I started jotting down my Lemmon Top 10, and here's what I came up with (in no partiular order):

Mister Roberts
Some Like It Hot
Days of Wine and Roses
The Odd Couple
Save the Tiger
The China Syndrome
Mass Appeal
Missing
Glengarry Glen Ross
The Prisoner of Second Avenue

It's funny: Lemmon's characters can usually be divided between comedic and dramatic, but in truth each of the good ones had a bit of both. The priest in Mass Appeal was funny, as the was the failing fashion maker in Save the Tiger - but each was tragic. And in his hilarious character (Unger leaps to mind) there is something of the resignation of the clown, the knowledge of a tough life that compels humor. The man himself summed it up best:

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.

UPDATE: Wintering is an indoor sport in these parts, and along with sports in pre-pitchers and catchers territory, it seems to turn fertile minds to the movies - especially these days, when downloads and Tivo and Netflix makes every easy chair into a cinema seat. James Wolcott turns his attention to movie criticism, where these days, he finds "critics living so high in their heads that they've severed themselves from the wit and physicality of good acting, or even enjoyable bad acting." Wolcott confesses to Lemmon non-fandom in the same post, but graciously turns on his traffic spigot here anyway for precisely the latter value - enjoyable bad acting. Yessir! I love enjoyable bad acting,even the loud yammering of Lemmon's goofball low-level comedies (especially in January).

Indeed, "bad" acting and film-making of a higher order is a recurring theme in the exellent pair of posts by Lance Mannion and Jason Chervokas on Woody Allen. Outside of the brilliant book-ends Annie Hall and Manhattan, my favorite Woodman moments are the goofy ones - the silly lines, the purposeful mangling of language in shining a light on all of our insecurities that Allen masters. When he is at his most pretentious, he is at his worst - the farther from humor, the farther from truth, in my view. (This does not bury the human drama in his work; it merely raises those that retain the humorous edge, the delight at the absurd). Woody Allen is a humorist - the "great director" tag has been a drag anchor on his critical acclaim, despite an incredibly prolific career - and yeah, Bananas should be on any top 10 list (but to follow Wolcott's theme, I'd put Manhattan Murder Mystery - a thin Thin Man - on the list too, because it's got some great bad acting in it). Interiors? Nah - and certainly not in January, when it could push this indoor sportsman over the freaking edge.

So the Mets did as I asked them and traded the wife. Oh sure, they included hurler righty Kris Benson in the deal - but let's face it, the Mets got Anna Benson out of town before the Wilpons and their organization could be associated any longer with her insane, violent, and disgusting extremist right-wing rants. Sure, Kris was an okay fourth starter, but let's face it, getting Anna's, er, assets on the Acela to Baltimore was job one for Omar Minaya, who, it seems, got a couple of hard-throwing soupbones for coach Peterson's collection in the bargain. Heilman will slot in very nicely in the rotation, thank you, now that the pen is deeper.

But enough about Anna, whose interest in this town - shall we say - was clearly sagging anyway. I have discovered her blog buddy, either a lookalike sisterly twin of foul intention pixelated to thrill and seperated at birth, or yet another curvacious brunette hate-monger who begs the question: do self-loathing Rush Limbaugh types find this sort of thing hot?

I speak (probably for the one and only time) of Pamela, the gutter-talking proprietress of Atlas Shrugs [no link], a popular conservative blog that is now part of the glittering Pajamas Media empire. Ms. Shrugs delights in posting pictures of herself at various gatherings, usually with celebrated conservative commentators, and when Jim Wolcott teased her a few months back for rubbing up against right-winger Glenn Reynolds at a PJ Media bash, Pamela and her posse went nuts - let's just say Wolcott won the war (as Gilliard noted at the time). But I did notice that Anna B. and Pamela AS bore a stunningly strange resemblance: a certain look at the camera, the long dark hair, and the hate speech. So when the Mets moved Anna and Mr. Benson to B'more, I popped over to see what Pamela was writing - I mean, have they ever been seen in the same room, I ask you? - and came across this fun, little nugget, a reaction to a wire story on Yahoo about the current death toll in the Iraq war:

You know I get these inane notifications everyday. Those pussies over at YAHOO must understand that this is what happens during war - soldiers die, not people going to work in the WTC, Pentagon etc.............soldiers die during war. But what about the real news? YAHOO, Google and their leftard media warlords wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Quel Bastards!

Anna, meet Pamela. Perhaps, you two can get together for crab cakes along the Inner Harbor and rant about the wild anti-American, soldier-hating radicals at Yahoo and Google and the rest, while the boats ply their trade along the docks and waves drum endlessly against the bulkhead.

January 22, 2006

Bowing to pressure from the regime of Pakistani strongman Pervez Musharraf, the United Nations cancelled an appearace by international human rights figure Mukhtaran Bibi Friday, banning her from doing a live interview with Soledad O'Brien sponsored by the New York-based charity Virtue Foundation. As readers of this blog know, Mukhtar Mai (as she is also known) was sentenced to be gang-raped by village elders in her village in Pakistan; instead of killing herself under the primitive honor system of the rural provinces, she used went to court and used a government settlement to found a school for illiterate villagers (like herself). Readers of this blog also know that she's my hero, a living symbol for modern times and the challenge of advancing modernity and human rights while respecting tradition and regional/religious differences. According to The Times, when "asked why the United Nations bowed to the Pakistani protest, Shashi Tharoor, the under secretary general for communications, said he could not comment on this specific case. But, he said: "As a general principle, indeed there are written instructions guiding the holding of any event on United Nations premises in which we are obliged to take into account views formally expressed by member states. This is a building and an organization that belongs to the member states." What the Pakistani government still does not realize is that Mukhtaran Bibi's story has spread throughout the free world (yeah, helped by a bunch of you bloggers, God love ya) and it's stronger than anything General Musharraf has at his disposal. Mukhtar Mai is world's foremost Pakistani, and she can only be a force for good - muzzling her at the U.N. (with pathetic technocratic complicity by that body itself) can do nothing to stifle her message. Blogger Bill Petti has it right when he notes "to say that they are on the wrong side of this one would be an understatement ... how they can let a country like Pakistan protest this appearance is beyond me." And for once, the National Review's headline sums it up best: "The Shameful, Cravenly U.N. vs. the Bravest Woman on Earth."

Five songs into their two-hour set at MSG Friday night, Keith Richards launched into a spare four-note blues intro, Charlie Watts and Darryl Jones came in half a bar later, and the Rolling Stones fell into the dirty, swinging classic Sway - one of my favorite Stones numbers and as Mick Jagger noted to the crowd, a rarity in the live lineup.

It was a strange and wonderful show, worth every penny of the tuition-size admission price: the most stripped-down Stones performance I've ever seen, devoid of fireworks, blow-up dolls and lasers, just a spare stage set and highlights from the greatest catalogue in rock and roll, performed by the greatest band, forty years on and teaching now at the highest university level. In previous shows, I've always felt like one the suckers whom Mick had finagled under the tent - a happy sucker, but a sucker nonetheless - this time, I felt a part of the music. We had great seats, and when the movable stage (propelled by a dozen burly stagehands) rolled Charlie's drum kit, along with the rest of the band, out to the far end of the Garden floor, the video screen went black, and the band was only a few rows away. From that vantage point, it was clear that Richards in particular was in top form, taking all the solos and intro riffs, and communing with Watts and Jones to propel the band's signature chunky rock blues into the rafters. Fellow Stones fanatic (and really, is age an issue in music?) Andy Monfried has a great riff on his blog [courtesy of Fred] about Richards' performance Friday and his role as the architect of the Stones, as opposed to Jagger's role as builder:

I go for the guitar, I go for the MAIN architect.

The architect in this corporation, the guy who created the vision, the guy who made the "riffs" -- conceptualized the MUSIC, (not anything else) -- just made good ol' music is, Keith.

But, its also very important to note, for many years -- he was the architect, and NOT the builder. Meaning, although he wrote, and opened all songs with his chords, and riffs (that he created) -- ultimately, and for a variety of reasons it was his builders, Brian Jones, Mick Taylor -- and for the past 30 years, Ron Wood who were the "builders" in the Stones, not to mention the rest of the band.

Going to see them for the past 20 or so years, it was always a treat to see a legend, and watch a architect, and how the music he created, has evolved, but interestingly enough, it was the builders who frequently carried the day, (or the show).

Not anymore.

This was the best Stones show I saw EVER.

You know why?

The archtitect came back (for one night) to be the builder. Early on Mick made reference to Mark Messier's retirement, and how much love he has for NYC and playing here -- saying, "SSShhh dont tell the rest of the world, but this is our favorite place to play..."

An interesting take, but I had to agree on this "best" label - it was for me. Previous shows have been professional spectacles, put on by the master rock businessman Jagger - enjoyable and worthy of respect as a great traveling, portable business. But Friday's show was different - it was a rare transformative experience for this aging, cynical boomer - it swung and it has me thinking about music, about change, about taking some chances, and taking on some new challenges - and it began to swing with Sway.

January 18, 2006

The calendar says January, but the temperatures and the bureaucrats are all whistling songs of spring - to be more accurate, of baseball and its economic benefits. Some equate new stadiums to a kind of municipal Loch Ness monster: the benefits are mythical but the suckers show up anyway. Others say big-time professional sports venues can turn communities around. After many years of yakking, it appears the Empire State Development Corporation here in New York takes the latter stance: today it voted to approve plans to build new stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets.

Said chairman Charles Gargano: "The state and the city are making an economic development investment that will not only assist with the development of new stadiums for the Yankees and the Mets, but will result in infrastructure improvements for the surrounding communities."

According to Crain's, plans call for new $800 million Yankees stadium and a new $444 million Mets stadium. The ESDC will issue $149 million in tax-exempt bonds for the projects pending final approval from the Public Authorities Control Board. As part of the new projects, both teams will sign non-relocation agreement that will keep the Mets in New York for 35 years and the Yankees for 40 years. The city would contribute $223.6 million toward parking and infrastructure improvements for both new stadiums. Both plans commit significant private money, unlike the previous generations of Major League stadiums in town.

Now, I'm a big fan (Mets) and would love to plant myself behind the third-base dugout in Fred Wilpon's new Ebbetts Field by the No. 7 line and watch David Wright smack fastballs into kingdom come. I'm sure Yankee fans (there are more of you) feel the same. But are these massive public-private partnerships worth it? Do big-time sports deals really help a city to achieve wider economic success, really help a neighborhood up off its knees? The debate has raged here in New York for years, and is now afire down in Washington DC where the Nationals are looking for a new publicly-financed stadium.

I'm not sure where I stand, although generally speaking, the more private dollars are involved, the better I'm able to understand the economics of helping a private business. But I am here to recommend a blog worth following if you're into this issue - the wonderful Field of Schemes, the companion site to the book by Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause. Talk about granular: these folks know the issues inside and out and they're following updates on a national level. Great stuff, well worth an addition to any wonkster's feed reader.

UPDATE: Field of Schemes analyzes the Mets deal, and finds one Hell of a bargain - the equivalent of Pedro offering to pay the Mets to let him take the mound.

January 17, 2006

I laughed, I cried, I did a spit-take on the train, splattering the stockbroker in the next seat with a mixture of Amstel and spit. Cause? Christopher Hitchens' insane pandering to the editors of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page (the man will do anything, it appears, for yet another byline) and by pandering I mean the laugh line of the day, featured in the headline: Benjamin Franklin, Conservative.

What is it about a conned newbie neo-con that makes him want to find "conservatives" among the Founding Fathers? For "proof" of old Ben's political slant - oddly time-warped 300 years from his birth - Hitchens serves up exactly two facts: he became an active abolitionist only late in life and he believed in God. True, some American conservatives still pine away for the old plantation days, but as Hillary Clinton points out, they can always find it in the House of Representatives. And yes, it's safe to say that most conservatives cleave to the Almighty.

But conservative Ben Franklin? In the words of John Adams: ha-freaking-ha, my friend. For God's sake Chris, sit down.

Franklin was the orginal American liberal, a practical radical whose political support in England was among the progressive Whigs of the 18th century. Franklin believed fervently in the public sector, and pioneered the intersection of government, charity, and popular causes for the common good. He invented the first municipal fire department, and levied voluntary taxes to pay for it. (He was not against taxation in principal; indeed he made a fortune printing government tax stamps before the break with England). He rebelled against the true American conservatives of the day - the puritanical sects of the New England colonies - and sided with radicals to break free from England. Personally, he was something of a libertine and his belief in civil rights undergirded the Declaration of Independence. In his day, a belief and pursuit of science - as opposed to pure theology - was the very essence of liberalism. And yes, he founded the first major abolitionist society - albeit at nearly 80 years of age.

Worse, Mr. Hitchens, he loved (gasp) the French!

While I suppose today's 300th anniversay piece pleased your recent neo-con artist allies, but calling Ben Franklin "conservative" is right up there with labelling your article "well-researched." The effort of aligning the politics and thought of the 18th century radical Franklin with today's American religious conservative coalition is over-wrought and ludicrous.

January 16, 2006

We tend to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as both a leader of a movement and a martyr to a greater cause. But I wonder if we would remember him much at all - whether, for instance, we would have this day of reflection - if it had not been for his mastery of language. His words, it seems to me, are stunning in their use during his own day: bold, intellectual, reasoned, and religious. Those words provided the soundtrack for the marches - and they have endured as a powerful echo alongside the black and white footage and yellowed news clippings.

Dr. King's use of language withstood both the stern tests of the day and those of the ages. Some of it was style and delivery. His measured tones and resonant, educated voice brought stark contrast to his more hateful opponents and rallied support among the white media. But even without that distinctive voice, the words are masterful - presidents of the modern era have speecch-writers and CEOs have ghostly composers; Dr. King wrote himself, sermons, essays, speeches. He did not write "low" for the masses, he wrote high for posterity. So this morning, I was reading Letter from Birmingham Jail on the Nobel site and I came across the following paragraph, and it blew me away: its meaning today is as powerful as it was then, not so much in terms of race relations now, but in terms of mild, political moderation and the price we pay for adopting the safe route. Read it and see if you agree [my emphasis on the last sentence]:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

UPDATE: Speaking of Dr. King's words resonating in the modern world, Andrea has a nice post on why the Drum Major Institute is so aptly named.

UPDATE II: Of course, there are those who say that conservatism in this country has no connection to racism, hasn't used it to gain political power. Here's just a quick taste of what's running on Free Republic [no link], the most popular mainstream conservative Web community in the nation, the main online bulwark of the Bush loyalists: "I wonder. Would I be called insensitive, politically incorrect or bigoted if I proposed a "Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Long-range Rifle Match?" Nice. The answer is yes.

My Dirty Life & Times

Tom Watson is a journalist, author, media critic, entrepreneur and consultant who has worked at the confluence of media technology and social change for more than 20 years. This long-running blog is my personal outlet - an idiosyncratic view of the world. "My dirty life and times" is a nod to the late, great Warren Zevon because some days I feel like my shadow's casting me.